Human beings aren't supposed to eat 3 meals a day all week

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I had a breakthrough this year. While searching for information online about managing Autism/Asperger's Syndrome and losing weight I found stuff about fasting. For a lot of people the word "fasting" has connotations of hippie bull, anorexia or someone going on hunger strike as a protest. It sounds like an awful way to put yourself through pain.

What I found out, though, was a British journalist called Michael Mosley made a TV show about how he went on a diet called the 5:2 Diet and lost weight. The premise of the diet is, you eat normally 5 days a week. The other 2 you have no more than 600 calories if male, 500 if female.

Ideally you eat all those calories in one meal so your body fasts for the longest period possible. It doesn't matter if you do the two fasting days back-to-back or spread out through the week. I started doing it and I found out something amazing. I don't feel unbearable food cravings anymore. Does anyone get those?

I used to feel if I didn't get food in a few minutes, or even right now, I was going to explode. My eyes would get a wild look in them and I'd become so irritable. In effect, I feel now like my Asperger's is less obvious. Anxiety has gone down in volume a lot and I am in control of food, not the other way around.

Most supermarkets and restaurants would hate you to know about this because they want you to be hooked to food so you keep spending all the time. Following this diet I've cut my weekly food consumption by 25% but I'm not underweight. I feel healthy. Not only have I lost weight, I save money too. And unlike people who are on a constant diet counting calories every day I don't have all that stress. I just eat one moderate meal for 2 days and 3 ordinary meals the other 5 days.

If you think back to how our ancestors lived, whose biological systems we still have, they did not have access to constant food. When they ate they often had more food than we do now - whole animals perhaps. But there were times in between when they couldn't eat. Farming only came with the advent of civilization, it took a long time in human development to get to that point. It was only with the invention of farms that we began to have year-round constant food supply. I think our bodies are still designed to sometimes go for a long time without food to stop us over-burning our engines. I used to need to urinate a lot and I no longer have that problem. So if anyone wants to lose weight I recommend giving it a try. By the way, you can drink as much water as you like when you're fasting.

If it works for you, great. But I'd advise caution, especially if you've ever had any sort of eating issues. Putting your body into starvation mode actually helps your mind become more likely to develop an eating disorder. Check out the Minnesota Starvation Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota ... Experiment

Healthy men who volunteered were put on a semi-starvation diet and developed symptoms that mirrored an eating disorder like preoccupation with food, weight, shape, poor health, secret binging and purging, restricting, depression, and the preoccupation with food persisted even during the rehabilitation stage.

I'm just saying this because I'm in recovery from anorexia, and some of my relapses started out like this, cutting things out, trying a new diet. It was a slippery slope and even small changes can have big repercussions. If you find yourself getting too obsessed with food, or wanting to cut things out drastically, maybe you should rethink your motivation. I'm not saying don't give it a shot, I'm just saying be careful.

I tend to get quite nauseous when I'm hungry (to the point where it's actually hard for me to focus on anything other than my nausea), so it sounds like this diet wouldn't be right for me. I'm glad it's working for you, though.

Actually, this is one area in which Asperger's has helped me. I stick to a pretty regimented food plan, and just the preference for routine that goes with Asperger's seems to make that work better. For example, if I happen to miss lunch for some reason, or just feel hungry during the afternoon, I can handle it ok. I know most diet plans say don't do that, because you will lose control and eat a whole bag of potato chips, but that doesn't happen for me. I am able to just remind myself that we eat dinner at a certain time, that I am not likely to die from malnutrition before that time, and just ignore the hunger signals and get on with whatever I was doing.

Of course it took me quite a few years to get to this point, but it is a nice place to be at.

I've practically given up trying to find out what the best eating regime is for people. There are so many conflicting theories out there. I've heard that a starvation diet can lead to terrible health problems, I've also heard that it's the only intervention known to increase healthy life expectancy above what's normal. I've only got one life, so I don't know when to eat. Best guess, don't do anything too extreme.

I can no longer fast due to other health issues. I don't see anything wrong with people trying to control their food intake to make themselves feel better, and I know that what I eat has strong effects on my mood. Whenever trying anything like this I recommend to keep a journal. If you are writing out what you are eating (or not eating) and then writing how you feel you'll get a better understanding of yourself and can make better choices for your own body.
Good luck and stay safe.

I would agree with the title, but disagree with the OP.

Human beings aren't "supposed" to eat 3 meals a day all week, but nor are we "supposed" to starve ourselves for long periods. We're not "supposed" to do anything.

Generally, animals eat when they're hungry and they move to where they can find food in order to do so. There isn't much reason to suppose that ancient homonids were any different.

If you're interested in research on fasting, it might be worth reading up on Krista Varady's work.

Pretty much this. The unhealthy weight issues many western societies have are a consequence of our high intelligence and sociability having allowed us to form a society where the majority of members can provide for themselves far beyond what is needed for survival. We are highly adaptable omnivores, so It's not really applicable to say we are "supposed" to eat in any particular way. However, we spent a very long time as hunter-gatherers before the rise of agriculture, so there probably is a case to be made for us being more suited for an eating-pattern that ebbs and flows, rather than being at a constant high tide, as is the norm in modern society.

In my "weight loss/weight management" toolbox, I've learned we all fight "homeostasis." It's the body's natural mechanism to seek a balance. Take a drug too long, you often build a tolerance for it. Diet without exercise, your metabolism will drop to maintain its weight on what you're eating. Never change your training routine, you'll see less results from the same work.

The key is to keep the system guessing so it never fully gets to adapt.

That's one way "fasting" helps with weight management. You can do a similar thing with a "cheat day" or "cheat week" (depending on how serious you are dieting). A splurge on one day (not crazy, but something well outside the norm) keeps the body guessing.

Same here. Most of the time, I actually have four smaller meals a day and I am still underweight. I think everyone's metabolism is different. I just eat whenever my body tells me I am hungry. When I am not hungry, I am not thinking about food and would not force myself to eat if not hungry.